Thursday, April 21, 2016

“It is a Sight No One Need Be Desirous of Seeing”: Friday Afternoon Executions in the Army of the Potomac, Part 6.

In the previous five posts, I profiled the cases of convicted
deserters executed by the Army of the Potomac. From June 12 to October 2, the
army executed twenty-three men for that crime. If you have been reading along, you know I have an explanation for why this surge of executions came when it did. I argue that Abraham Lincoln temporarily abandoned his normally lenient policy of pardoning convicted deserters when, in mid-1863, the stories of repeated Union defeats darkened his days. However, by late-autumn, Lincoln’s natural
affinity for mercy resurfaced, and he began pardoning deserters who
petitioned him. In October, he pardoned two convicted deserters from the 119th
Pennsylvania whose parents begged for clemency, and in November, he did the same
for a soldier from the 49th Pennsylvania. However, not all cases
seemed to have warranted or been brought to his attention. Even after the bloody
execution of Adam Schmalz, four more men suffered death by firing squad:

By the last month of the year, the number of executed deserters had
risen to twenty-seven, and every corps (except the Cavalry Corps) had carried
out executions for deserters. The executions went on hiatus when Meade’s army
embarked on the Rappahannock and Mine Run Campaigns, but when it returned to Brandy
Station and established winter quarters, the executions started again, and
justice was meted out on two more Fridays.

For this post, I’d like to examine those last two Fridays. They were
December 4 and December 18. Even though many soldiers who witnessed them were viewing executions
for the second or third time, these killings were just as vivid to the audience
as they had been earlier in the year.

On December 4, the 1st Division, 3rd Corps, executed
Private Cyrus Hunter, a soldier attached to the 3rd Maine. Corporal
Wyman White of the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters remembered Hunter’s case vividly.
“The story of his troubles was sad,” White confided to his journal. “He could
not be driven into a fight, and he acknowledged himself a coward.” In the past, the officers
3rd Maine had tried to be gracious with Hunter, assigning him to non-combat tasks. But
even so, Hunter still deserted, and when he did, it cost him his officers’ good graces. He stood
his court-martial, and upon conviction, he faced a death sentence.

December 4 was a beautiful day, weather-wise. The 1st
Division, 3rd Corps, formed into a three-sided box with little trouble
and it patiently awaited the arrival of Private Hunter. An ambulance carrying his coffin
started the procession, followed by the drum corps, the provost marshal, and
then a guard of five men at the position of “reverse arms.” Hunter and his
chaplain followed next, followed by five more guards carrying their weapons at “charge bayonet.”
Observers remarked how Hunter looked every inch a soldier, even as he marched
to death at the hands of his comrades. Private Samuel B. Wing, who served in Hunter’s
company, remembered that the condemned man was “in the prime of life, fine
proportioned, weighing about 180 pounds, fine features and complexion, healthy,
strong, and vigorous.” Corporal White agreed. He wrote, “The prisoner was a
fine, clean looking man, I should judge about thirty years old and about six
feet in height. He had a beautiful full beard and was in fine form physically.”

Additionally, Hunter betrayed no emotion as he walked to his grave. As
he marched past his old company, Private Wing noticed his countenance. He wrote,
“He seemed wholly indifferent to [his fate]. The chaplain who walked beside
him, told me that he was perfectly unmoved and unconcerned. Oh! How hard the
human heart can become!” Corporal White confirmed the same air of indifference.
He wrote, “The man to be shot marched around that long line of soldiers, all
facing him, as unconcerned as any man there, keeping step to the dead march
being played by the drum corps, and he, the man who was too much of a coward to
fight in battle.”

Private Hunter sat on his coffin and died cleanly, but only a few in the
audience liked what they saw. Corporal White wondered how a professed coward
could meet death so bravely. With disgust, White wagered, “It seemed to me that
this man might have been made a brave and good soldier if his officers had
taken the right course with him. It always seemed to me that the man ought not
to have been shot.” Private Wing, who was a draftee and unused to such hard
scenes, opined, “Some say, it was all right, that he deserved it; but it is
more than I ever want to see again, or ever want to carry in my memory long.”

The day after Hunter’s execution, General Meade signed General Order
Number 104. Five more condemned deserters were added to the death list, their
executions scheduled for December 18. The army intended to squeeze in
one more mass execution before the New Year. The convicted men were:

·Private Winslow N. Allen, 76th New
York

·Private George E. Blowers, 2nd
Vermont

·Private John Tague, 5th Vermont

·Private William H. Devoe, 57th New
York

·Private John McMann, 11th U.S.
Regulars

The oldest of the condemned men was Private William H. Devoe, age
forty-six, a native of Utica, New York. Devoe had enlisted back on September
15, 1861, and had fought with his regiment, the 57th New York,
through some of its toughest battles. He was last seen on July 2, 1863, when
his regiment plunged into the George Rose Wheatfield at Gettysburg. Sometime
later, authorities apprehended him, and he faced a court martial for desertion.
The men of Devoe’s regiment had a tough time making sense of his crime. As
one of them later wrote, “He was not a ‘bounty jumper’ but one of the first
enlistments, had passed through several battles and was reported missing after
Gettysburg. It was truly a funeral procession when the regiment marched to his
execution.” The 1st Division, 2nd Corps, formed at
Stevensburg and carried out Devoe’s execution. According to an observer, he
died quickly, falling over his coffin, “instantly dead.”

Of the five executions held on December 18, the case of Private Winslow
Allen was likely the strangest. Allen enlisted in Company H, 76th
New York, back on December 4, 1861, when he was almost twenty-four-years-old. He
deserted in the spring of 1862 before his regiment ever saw combat and he made
his way back home to his wife and child. For more than a year, he remained
undetected, but then he chose to go to the front again as a substitute. Allen
took a $300 bounty and returned to the Union army in September 1863 with a detachment of
eight men. Oddly enough, he was assigned to his old regiment—indeed, to his old
company! He gave a fake name—Newton—but when his sergeant called the roll, his
old comrades recognized his voice. The officers took him into custody and Allen
stood trial for desertion.

Apparently, Allen did not expect to die for his crime. Back when he
deserted in 1862, the death sentence for deserters had always been commuted or
pardoned. Private Albert Smith of Company D narrated, “So many had been
arrested and either returned to duty or punished by imprisonment and loss of
pay, that he could not believe he would be sentenced to death. Others who had
been sentenced to be shot had been pardoned, so that after the decision became
known to him he still indulged in hope.” Allen’s company commander, Captain
Amos Swan, tried to explain to him that his hope was in vain. As Private Smith
related, “A day or two before his death he began to realize his situation, and
to set about making preparations to enter ‘The undiscovered country, from whose
bourne no traveler returns’.”

At 2 P.M., December 18, Allen’s death proceedings began, and the 1st
Division, 1st Corps, formed for the execution. Allen did not have a
chaplain to console him. Instead, he relied on Captain Swan escort Allen to the hollow square. As they marched arm-and-arm, the
prisoner underwent a rapid change of emotion. At first, remembered Private
Smith, “He seemed calm and collected, and declared himself ready to die, if
such must be his fate.” But as Swan and Allen marched to the grave and coffin,
Allen could see the faces in the crowd. Smith continued:

As they marched to
the mournful measure of the death march, and neared the fatal spot where the
rough coffin and gaping grave were waiting to receive their victim, he seemed
suddenly struck with terror, and, seizing the Captain’s hand with a vice-like
grasp, thus remained until they arrived at the coffin. Around him were formed
his companions whom he had deserted. The grave which was to receive him as a
loathsome criminal, was fresh beside him. It was a severe test of his physical
courage. To none but the Captain was there the exhibition of the least emotion.

The sergeant of the guard placed Allen on the foot of his coffin. He
tied a blindfold over his eyes and pinioned his hands. The provost marshal,
Captain John A. Kellogg, read aloud the order of execution, and Captain Swan whispered
into Allen’s ear: “Winslow, I can go no further with you; the rest of your dark
journey is alone. Have you any last word[s] for your wife and child?” Allen
replied, “No, Only tell them I love them all!” These were his last words. Swan
stepped aside and Kellogg gave the signal. One member of Allen’s regiment,
Private Uberto Burnham, wrote home that the execution was quick and painless: “Everything
passed off in the best of order. The prisoner was hit by eleven bullets. He
died without a struggle.” Private Smith agreed: “He died without a perceptible
movement of a muscle.” Strangely, it was Allen’s birthday. He had just turned
twenty-six.

Although only a few in the line wished to see Allen executed, his situation did not elicit many
sympathies from the men who watched him die. One of the sterner characters wrote
home: “It is hard, I know, but without such punishment there could be no army!”

Meanwhile, over in the camp of the 2nd Division, 6th Corps,
a dual execution occurred, this one for Private John Tague and Private George Blowers.
As always, the division assigned to carry out the killings formed up in a three-sided box facing the graves. The
soldiers who observed the execution stood at “order arms” for about one hour
until two ambulances drove onto the site, bearing the condemned men and their
coffins. One of the soldiers in line, Private Wilbur Fisk, wrote, “It
seemed as if some horrible tragedy in a theater were about to be enacted,
rather than a real preparation for an execution.” The most alarming thing about
it was the behavior of John Tague, who, as the orders of execution
were being read, threw his hat onto the ground in bold defiance. Two chaplains
stepped to the sides of Tague and Blowers, bade them kneel, and delivered a
prayer. After that, the sergeant of the guard conducted them to their coffins
and made them kneel again. He put two massive rings around their necks which
suspended targets on their chests. (By now, authorities had realized
that the firing squads needed to be coaxed into taking a kill shot.) Strangely,
this execution contained no reserve. That is, no one expected the prisoners to
live beyond the first volley. Two platoons of men faced each prisoner, and the
prisoners were not blindfolded. Private Fisk recorded the final moments:

Blowers had been
sick, his head slightly drooped as if oppressed with a terrible sense of the
fate he was about to meet. He had requested that he might see his brother in
Co. A, but his brother was not there. He had no heart to see the execution, and
had been excused from coming. Tague was firm and erect till the last moment,
and when the order was given to fire, he fell like dead weight, his face
resting on the ground, and his feet still remaining on the coffin. Blowers fell
at the same time. He exclaimed, “O dear me!” struggled for a moment, and was
dead. Immediately our attention was called away by the loud orders of our
commanding officers, and we marched in columns around the spot where the bodies
of the two men were lying just as they fell. God grant that another such
punishment may never be needed in the Potomac Army.

This was Private Fisk’s first execution. Like many who witnessed such
tragic scenes, he never forgot what he saw:

I never was obliged
to witness a sight like that before, and I sincerely hope a long time may
intervene before I am thus called upon again. . . . These men were made
examples, and executed in the presence of the Division, to deter others from
the same crime. Alas, that it should be necessary! Such terrible scenes can
only blunt men’s finer sensibilities and burden them the more; and Heaven knows
that the influences of a soldier’s life are hardening enough already. . . . I
have seen men shot down by scores and hundreds in the field of battle, and have
stood within arm’s reach of comrades that were shot dead; but I believe I never
have witnessed that from which any soul shrunk with such horror, as to see
those two soldiers shot dead in cold blood at the iron decree of military law.

Finally, over at the encampment of the 2nd Division, 5th
Corps, the Army of the Potomac carried out one more execution. Only a few hours
earlier, the soldiers of that division had learned that high command intended to
execute Private John McMann of the 11th U.S. Regulars. No one was in
the mood for it, yet the division marched one mile from camp, through awful
mud, and formed a three-sided box. The enlisted men grumbled until the procession
appeared, which cast a pall of silence over the scene. The band arrived first, followed
by the eleven executioners. Next, came four men carrying the coffin, the
condemned prisoner, a chaplain, and a provost guard of forty men. Of all the
deserters killed between June and December, Private McMann showed the most
surprising sense of decorum. According to Sergeant Porter Marshall of the 155th
Pennsylvania, “The culprit marched to the time with a firm step, recognizing
acquaintances and saluting the Generals as he passed them.” After parading past
his former comrades, McMann kneeled in front of his grave and joined the
chaplain in prayer which lasted five to ten minutes. Then, the chaplain
blindfolded him, shook his hand, and stepped to the side. Sergeant Marshall
remembered, “Everything was as still as death. He remained on his knees, his
head erect. The officer gave the command by signs, and when the guns cracked,
he fell forward on his face and knees, and in a few minutes he was in his grave
and we were on our way back to camp.”

Although nearly every member of the 2nd Division, 5th
Corps, had seen an execution before—most of them had been present to witness
the August 29 execution of the five deserters from the 118th
Pennsylvania—none of them felt that the scene had gotten any easier. Sergeant
Marshall wrote, “We had hoped, after witnessing the execution of the five
deserters at Beverly Ford, that it would never be necessary to witness another.
It is a sight that no one need be desirous of seeing.”Amazingly, all six soldiers executed in December had died cleanly, something that could not be said about the executions carried out in the previous months.

In any event, the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac had five months to mull over what they had seen. In May 1864, the army marched into the Wilderness. The real killing began. At that point, more sinister images filled their nightmares.